


Three Maids and an Angel (Don't Walk Into a Bar)

by Vulgarweed



Category: Good Omens - Gaiman & Pratchett, Harry Potter - Rowling, His Dark Materials - Pullman, Kairos (Time) Series - L'Engle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-26
Updated: 2010-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-08 08:30:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Little girls everywhere get warned about the dangers of harmless-looking strange gentlemen, but no one ever warns such a "gentleman" about very strange and knowing young girls. Three Aziraphale-centric crossover ficlets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Maids and an Angel (Don't Walk Into a Bar)

As part of his resolution to Get Out More, Aziraphale had, at times, even been able to bring himself to briefly abandon the shop in its Hogsmeade location—after all, if no one was in it, his books were in no danger of being sold, not even to wizards.

He had long thought of the little clearing in the woods near the school as a fine and private place, but on this particular grey-clouded autumn afternoon, he found he was not alone.

It was one of the students—one he'd seen in his shop, he recalled, asking far too many questions about books on what he'd always thought of as cryptozoology and she just thought of as basic nature study.

She was odd and too curious, but nice enough, and pretty with her big eyes and blonde hair and bobbing radish earrings. Aziraphale had never been at much ease around children, and preferred to think it was that alone which made him uncomfortable.

She hardly seemed to notice him. On one arm she had a small bucket, and both her hands were dripping red with gore. She spattered blood around the glade as she occasionally reached into the bucket and pulled out something purple and wet, and tossed it for no apparent reason. Her face was radiant with delight.

"Hello there, Mr. Fell," she said. Her wand was stuck behind her ear, which Aziraphale thought had to be dangerous, and he felt self-conscious without one.

"Hello, Luna," he said, feeling an urge to back away slowly.

"Aren't they beautiful?" she exclaimed.

"Aren't…._what_ beautiful?" He looked around the glade, and saw nothing. But now that he paused to listen and sense, he heard dim sounds, like eldritch horsey snuffles and stampings, a creaking rustle like leather. There _were_ living beings here.

Ones that Luna could see, and Aziraphale could not. Which was _very_ disturbing.

Now that he watched closely as she hefted a chunk of raw meat into the air, it was intercepted by _something_ and never hit the ground.

"You can't see them?" said Luna, her eyes wide. "They're thestrals. Some people think they're scary, but I think they're just lovely. If you can't see them, then it's got to be because you've never seen death."

Aziraphale shuddered. "My dear child, unfortunately I can assure you I have seen it. All too often for my liking."

Almost of his own accord, his hand lifted. Luna slapped a heavy dripping chunk of liver into it. "That's alright. You can still feed them."

Gamely, Aziraphale tossed it, trying not to flinch what it was snapped up by something. Like feeding ducks, really. Invisible, carnivorous ducks. Well, whatever these mysterious animals looked like, he suspected they were profoundly unducklike.

Luna looked at him with her guileless eyes. "I guess the only people who can see them are people who have seen death _and_ are going to die someday too. You're not."

There was no way she should have known that. But she did.

***

For as long as anyone in Oxford could remember, Fell's Books had been there, a logical outgrowth of Fell Press, perhaps. Its subtle disengagement with factual memory was tenuous but sufficient, just like its keeper's grasp of social graces in this odd version of the world.

Mostly, Aziraphale got along, once he'd got Crowley's co-operation in helping him maintain a human illusion that didn't make the locals look away in horror. Currently, Aziraphale's "daemon," (really, of course, his demon) dozed in a tight blackish-green coil on a stack of priceless logs of experimental theology. You couldn't tell by looking if he was asleep or not; his yellow eyes were open regardless. Aziraphale was going to owe him a _lot_ of favours.

("I'll be your daemon next. But I warn you, I'll probably be a duck.")

The girl who stood in the doorway, with the weasel-thing at her heels, was too wise to remember falsely. _She_ knew the shop hadn't always been there. And she had no patience for small talk.

"Did you know my father?"

"Would you like some tea?"

"Sure. But please tell me…"

The snake hissed quietly. The marten looked at him, and just looked very puzzled.

"I knew _of _him, of course," Aziraphale said quietly. "Quite the radical. Very upsetting, to many. But, dear girl, one must, I suppose, admire…"

The snake hissed even louder.

Lyra looked at Pantalaimon a little guiltily. She knew that look on a daemon's face. But then, if she'd listened to Pan's voice of caution all along, things might have gone very differently indeed. She still wasn't sure if she wished that or not, but there was no point in wishing nonetheless.

Cautious or not, the sleek snake uncoiled and stretched, and headed for Lyra looking to all the world like it wanted its ears scratched, if it had had ears. Lyra looked at Aziraphale in a scandalised way. _Oh no, another old pervert._

"She won't, Crowley my dear, that's considered very forward and rude here. You know that."

"_You _won't pet me enough," said the daemon Crowley in a sulky way. Lyra only blinked a little at the male voice. (She'd already assumed that about Mr. Fell anyway without even realising it. Most people did.)

"Anyway," said Aziraphale, eager to shuffle back and forth between awkward subjects so too much attention wouldn't be devoted to any one of them. "A most challenging notion, the Republic of Heaven. Utopian in the extreme, of course…"

"I thought your people _liked_ utopian," said Crowley.

"Within reasonable limits."

"I've heard that before," said Pantalaimon.

"Well, yeah," said Lyra. "We found out the hard way…we have to build it where we are."

"A most reasonable way of looking at it," said Aziraphale dubiously.

"So," said Lyra. "Me and Pan were thinking…if it's a Republic, there'll have to be voting, and you're here …have you ever thought about running for office?"

 

***

"I'm sorry to be so blunt. It's just that you kythe so well, I couldn't help but notice."

"What?"

"When I first walked in and started looking at the experimental physics books…it was so clear that you wanted me to just go away, you were playing all these tricks with your mind, trying to _get within_…I know you didn't mean any real harm by it. It would have worked on me if I hadn't seen so many strange things, that's all."

She was thin and wore glasses and had unremarkable brown hair, though she was pretty for all that and had the air of someone who really didn't mind if she wasn't because she had so many other things to be doing with her brain besides worrying about it. She was American. She was terrifying, although she was fairly cheerful about it.

"You remind me of someone," Aziraphale said blankly. What was the word? _Vivacious_, that was it.

"If you don't mind me speaking freely," she said with a smile. "It's probably that I've helped save the world before, and so have you. We can recognize each other, I suppose. Though you'd probably feel even more of it if you met my little brother."

"Yes," said Aziraphale, "I suppose that could be it. If it's all the same to you, I'd just as soon not, although I'm sure your brother is a great fellow. I have a…bit of a fear of supernatural little boys these days. Much the way some people are afraid of snakes. It's irrational."

"My brother's not supernatural, not really. I suppose he's just _extremely_ natural."

She peered at Aziraphale through her thick glasses and showed fierce eyes. "What are you?"

"I'm a bookseller, though not a very good one."

"That's not what I mean." She looked again. "Hm." There was a certain sadness when she said, "I knew a Cherubim once. But you're not much like him."

"Cherubim is plural, my dear."

"He seemed plural to me. I never got a chance to count all his wings and eyes."

"I only have the standard two of each, I assure you," Aziraphale blurted.

"Ah-ha, I thought so."

What was it about people he simply could not lie to? "Technically, I'm a Principality. Although people make jokes about that these days."

"Now who would do that?"

What had she called it? Kything? He was going to learn how to stop doing it, he realized when she giggled. "Aww, that's cute," she said. "I knew a snake who was a Teacher once too. What a strange episode that was."

Aziraphale flushed just a bit, and decided to use his celestial subject-changing powers once again, and the one he chose only served to highlight how desperate he was. "Those books—is that your field, physics?"

Her face shadowed slightly. "My father is a physicist…and I'm worried. Something is…I mean, sir, if I may…"

She pulled out a very arcane—and very dangerous—volume that Aziraphale himself had started to work with, stuck a sheet of calculations inside, and then been distracted from by some long-ago emergency, probably something to do with Crowley.

Only eight other people in the world would have been able to comprehend it—two had won Nobel Prizes, and one of the other five dribbled a lot and wasn't allowed anything sharp because of what he might do with it.*

Meg Murry was one of the remaining four.

 

_*Meg also knows what happened to the mysterious eighth person, as this direct quote from _Good Omens_ only adds up to seven. The eighth both does and doesn't exist, and finds this very vexing._

 

~end~


End file.
